Could it be? An anti-fouling paint...

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Joy

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This is still in the beta stage...maybe someone could introduce the research to Lake Powell? I would LOVE to offer my boat in the trial! lol.
https://www.soundingsonline.com/boat-shop/this-antifouling-coating-creates-a-liquid-surface

If mussels foul your boat or dock on a regular basis, you might think the mollusk is the enemy. In reality, what you need to stop are the mussels’ byssal threads, or byssus, which the little buggers secrete like Spider-Man webbing when attaching themselves to solid surfaces. Stop the byssal threads from getting a grip, and no more mussels stuck to your hull or dock.
It’s a nifty trick, one that researchers think they’ve finally mastered — and that businessmen say will start appearing in new antifouling paint in early 2018. The magic material that is now advancing from the research phase to commercial use is called SLIPS, or Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces. SLIPS is a flexible silicone with a lubricant layer that essentially creates a liquid surface. It feels oily to the touch, and it has a reservoir in the coating’s pores to replace the liquid surface layer when it wears off. The design keeps the coating in a physical state that, to a mussel, seems different from a solid surface.

A recent study in the journal Science explains how researchers used SLIPS to confuse mussels enough that they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, attach. In their first experiment, researchers placed Asian green mussels on a checkerboard of sorts, with each square covered in a different antifouling material. The squares with the SLIPS coating confused the creatures. Mussels probed those surfaces longer, didn’t release their byssal threads at all or shot out the threads in a different direction, where a surface they read as solid seemed to be a better choice for attachment.
Wanting to know why the mussels were averse to the coating, the researchers next determined that mussels’ feet contain proteins that sense pressure. Measuring the amount of force that a mussel feels when its foot touches different surfaces led the researchers to realize that the SLIPS coating creates a pulling sensation, as opposed to a solid sensation. Mussels read the pulling as a bad feeling prior to attachment, so they look elsewhere for a better spot.
The coating was also tested in Scituate, Massachusetts, in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Panels covered in the coating were submerged in Scituate Harbor for 16 weeks to see whether they could resist the local blue mussel population. Again, the coating worked — and kept tunicates (“sea squirts”), hydroids and slime at bay, too.

Armed with this new research and three years’ worth of business development, SLIPS Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts — a company that grew out of the Harvard University-based research findings — is now working to commercialize the coating. Because SLIPS can repel more than water, it could have uses far beyond boating. SLIPS Technologies is looking into medical devices that need to resist blood and bacteria; machinery and storage businesses that need to stop sticky liquids, including oil, from glomming onto other materials; and even skyscrapers and airplane wings where ice buildup might be prevented. The SLIPS coating can be applied to plastics, metals, ceramics, glass and concrete, either by spraying, rolling it on or dipping materials into it. Peel-and-stick films have also been developed, along with injection-molded parts.
Company president David Ward told Soundings that boaters can expect to see SLIPS-branded antifouling paint in limited quantities by early 2018, with the goal of wider availability in 2019. SLIPS Technologies is now looking for shipyards that want to partner on a limited rollout ahead of the summer 2018 boating season to help gather more real-world data before the antifouling paint becomes widely available.
“We’re not quite at the point where this is over-the-counter yet; we’re not at that phase of scale-up,” Ward says. “We want more field data. We haven’t been through a full season with multiple boats yet. When we launch a commercial-ready product, it has to be perfect.”
Ward says the SLIPS coating can be applied to any type of boat — wood, fiberglass, aluminum or steel. The company has been testing the coating on a handful of boats near Boston for about six months, he says. “We’re a top coat in the normal painting system,” he says. “Whatever surface prep and priming you use for your particular underlying boat material, to get you to a top coat, you do the same stuff and replace the top coat with us.”
The federal government, along with private investors, is betting that boaters and other consumers will like what they see when SLIPS-branded products start to become widely available. SLIPS Technologies recently announced $8.6 million in financing that’s expected to go toward product development, testing and commercialization. That money includes a $2.95 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop and test SLIPS antifouling paint — not just for recreational boats, but also for military and commercial vessels.
“Barnacles, mussels and algae stick to the hulls of ships and boats, creating extra drag that costs the shipping industry approximately $20 billion each year in fuel,” the funding announcement stated. “SLIPS provides superior, environmentally friendly solutions to control biofouling and keep ships clean. Traditional paints for ship bottoms rely on copper biocides that leach into water, damaging marine ecosystems and requiring strict regulatory oversight. In contrast, SLIPS marine paints provide a safer alternative while offering enhanced biofouling protection.”
This article originally appeared in the February 2018 issue.

https://adaptivesurface.tech/marine-coatings/
 
The market will determine the success of this product. If it only lasts a year, or is too expensive initially it will never make it in large scale production. Time will tell how well it works and whether or not it is cost effective. I do like the idea of giving my 30' Cabin Cruiser a slicker bottom for fuel savings, and speed increases.
 
I hope this new technology is successful commercially. My experience so far with the mussels at Lake Powell is that they are attaching to metal parts of my boat, but not attaching to any painted surfaces. The solution I need at this point is to coat the metal (i.e. props, shafts, thru-hulls, trim tabs) with something to deter the mussel attachment. My bottom paint is relatively new (3 years old), so it may be that when new it repels the mussels better than when it thins as it gets older. I"m also using the "Dock Disk" product which I hope is helping. We'll see long term, but so far I've had little to no issues with mussels attaching to my bottom paint, just metal surfaces.

The theory of the SLIPS technology makes sense, and I can confirm that the 'threads' that the mussels use to attach to the boat are not easy to remove once on the boat, even after they are dead/dry out of the water.

The other big issue I thought would have hit us LP boaters by now, but as far as I know hasn't, is mussels blocking engine thru-hulls and internal pumps and intakes, causing catastrophic overheating and engine fires. I would imagine boats left in the water year-round would have started having these issues by now, but I have not heard of any personally. Have any of you heard of these issues yet?
 
I would imagine boats left in the water year-round would have started having these issues by now, but I have not heard of any personally. Have any of you heard of these issues yet?

Yep! I've emptied quagga out of sea strainers, pulled them by hand from outdrive intakes, and can only assume they exist inside the rest of our lake water and engine cooling systems. It's a cancer growing in areas that aren't easily serviced. :(
 
The marina has been testing a product called Propspeed for 2 or 3 years now. It's supposed to be applied to the prop and outdrive I believe. I am unsure of the cost but I can say it's held up well since putting it in. No signs of mussels on the coated metal and even less algae than the rope used to hang it. The rope also contains mussels on it. The plate is hung about 3-4 feet in the water and has only been removed a few times a year just to see progress.
 
Some pics of the plate. The algae is starting to show up but for something that just sits in the water year round without moving it's doing pretty good.
 

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Dan from Ticaboo has been taking care of our houseboat. He uses some sort of antifouling that has kept the drive clean. At least it has worked so far.
 
Ryan, is it a copper based paint like we used in the 60’s on our wood planked boats in salt water? Sq
 
Ryan, is it a copper based paint like we used in the 60’s on our wood planked boats in salt water? Sq
Your guess is as good as mine on this one Squirrel. Dan is contracted to do basically all the work on the boat. He told me that he uses some "paint" every year on the boat, but he wasn't very descriptive when I asked him what he used.
 
Some pics of the plate. The algae is starting to show up but for something that just sits in the water year round without moving it's doing pretty good.

Docker, thanks for the photos of the testing of this product on metal surfaces. That is promising data so far..... -Doug
 
This isn't totally new...but cool.

I'm a former salt water sailor and yes I use bottom paint. Its EPA legal, has a anti-slime compound in it too. I don't understand why people are not using bottom paint for their hulls, and specific paints for the props and outdrives. I mentioned it a year ago here....

The are different type of paints, ablative paints that slough off, Thin Film types that are too slippery, copper and zinc based paints, paints just for outdrives and different metals and hulls types, etc...

Its not the stuff from the 1990's, its modern and it works.

I know that the internal passages of engine need a separate solution to that problem.
 
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